I could rewrite that, or I just can leave that as it its. That’s the live annotations for the endurance from our famous commentator: Thanks, Belinda!

“So, here we are, one hour to race time, and we are in the design finals with TU Graz and Ecole de Technologie Superieur later this afternoon. The car is beautiful and seems to be running well. Of course, anything can happen in racing…as the moment that our muffler flew off at Hockenheim Ring last August.

1:00 p.m. Fifteen minutes to the second half of the endurance race. The order of the first five cars is GFR (yay, cheer, crowd goes wild), TU Graz, ETS, Uni Stuttgart, and U Maryland. They will then run through the top 30 cars, and then go to the last 30 cars; the middle cars ran first thing in the morning.

1:15 p.m. GFR is on the course. Matthias is driving and he looks great. First lap out of the box is 44.470, four seconds off the fastest time of the morning. He gets a lap to himself before they put Graz on the track. Their first lap is 46.3. ETS is on the track, the three teams in the design finals are on the track. Lap times: 45.5 for Graz, 45.something for ETS and 43.603 for Matthias. Stuttgart is on the track. Now Maryland is on the track with a big wing. Wind is up and down, tough conditions to race for the winged cars.

Stuttgart’s time is 43.792, less than a tenth of a second off of our fast time. Maryland at 44.519. Stuttgart’s lap time of 43.470 is the new quick time. ETS just got pulled over for Stuttgart to go by, and Matthias just flew by again. Matthias just hit 42. 5 seconds. He is absolutely flying!!
U of Michigan just joined on the track. It’s almost time for our driver change. Matthias just lapped ETS before the driver change. He drove like a dream.
Stuttgart, Graz and ETS are all in for the driver change.
Bill’s on the track. Bill’s time on first lap is 44.070. Michigan is at 44. 583. Stuttgart at 45.5911. Bill is really flying (quoting the announcer). Bill is on the 7th lap. Graz has 45.5. Missouri Science & Tech is now on thee course—7 cars are on the course! U. Mich is 1 lap from their driver change. Bill just took another lap in the low 44s. Bill and Matthias are generally getting the fastest times of the cars on the track. MUS&T just pulled 43.820. They have a wing, and their car looks fast.

Stuttgart just lapped Graz; we’re 3 laps from the end for GFR.
Maryland just got 42.966.
GFR is on lap 13, we’re all on pins and needles.
Bill just finished, we’re through the endurance race, and we have the fastest time in any lap. Wow, the team is so thrilled, we have our GFR chant down solid, and it’s so exciting. Stuttgart is at 43.4 and MD is at 43.0. Will anybody pass our time?
Stuttgart is on their 13th lap; Graz is done. Oh no, Stuttgart just pulled off the track, less than ¾ from the end of their race. Missouri US&T got pulled off for instability of their wing. As I’ve written here before, anything happens in racing, and this endurance race kills some of the best cars.

Stuttgart’s chain broke, just like in Hockenheim 2 years ago. ETS didn’t come back out after the driver change because they couldn’t restart their cars. Anyone who thinks winning a Formula competition is easy just have never been here to see the top cars fail to complete endurance.”

3:20 p.m. The team is in the white GFR shirts (white for design, black for competition) and in the design finals along with Graz and ETS. They are loosening up, dancing around the pits and hoping that we have a chance to win. The awards ceremony at 8 will tell the story.

After average results in skidpad and acceleration, the orange GFR car finished 2nd in autocross, with a very small margin on first place!

The skidpad and acceleration runs on Friday morning delivered only average results, placing GFR on a 14th place in skidpad and 31th in acceleration. The acceleration run was slowed down by an overly aggressive traction control, which was tuned on a lower quality track.

But in the afternoon, the GFR 10 and its drivers showed the competitiveness of our entry! Bill already set some solid and safe laps, which already were good for Top 10 times. Then Matthias managed to set two very quick laps, with its second lap being only 0.22 s of the Stuttgart time.

This promises a very interesting endurance event on Saturday!

The results in detail:

* Skidpad: 14th place with a time of 5.291s and 33.90 points (of 50)
* Acceleration: 31th place with a time of 4.306 and 49.43 points (of 75)
* Autocross: 2nd place with a time of 63.720s and 147.54 points (of 150)

At the award ceremony in the evening, besides the Business Presentation award we also received two awards for our body design and for our innovative global collaboration.

Tomorrow we will drive the endurance with both the Top 3 teams in design and the Top 3 autocross finishers on track. We should be on track at around 1pm local time (11am

Pacific time and 7pm CET). Right now first calculations show that a Top 5 result for us is possible, if everything continues to run smoothly. So cheer for our team.

We started bright and early, arriving at the track at 7:30 am. Unfortunately the weather didn’t agree with us as rain was on and off all morning. This did nothing to damp our spirits though, as we headed to the design event at 8:30. We spent our alloted 45 minutes talking about both the design of the car and the workings of the only international Formula SAE/Formula Student team. In our design group (all talking to the same judges at different times throughout the day) were also the very competitive teams from the University of Stuttgart (with their 2009 car which has already won Formula Student UK, Formula Student Germany and Formula SAE Italy) and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Because only one team would be able to advance, it would be tough to advance.

Immediately after design we went to get fuel and onto the tilt table, part of tech inspection where we ensure the car will not roll in a 1.7 g cornering situation. With no problems on the tilt table, we headed to the noise test and presentation events. Both went well, and we headed to the brake test.

The day couldn’t be had without any frustration, so we saw our first problems in the brake test. Even with full brake bias to the rear, we couldn’t get the single rear brake to lock. Our driver had both feet on the brake pedal, and managed only to crack the rear caliper. We rolled back to the pits and swapped caliper and rotor.

With that we went to the cost event. The overall response of the judges was very positive and we feel we can do fairly well. After cost we headed back to the brake test and passed on the first attempt.

From there it was just playing the waiting game. We were finished with tech, finished with the first round of static events and ready to start dynamics in the morning. We waited / slept / chatted in the pits until 6:00 when the design finalists were announced.

We made it! We had only 30 minutes to get everything prepared and over to the design event. We got everything over in time and once we got our design bay, we talked to a variety of judges for 3 hours. With lots of positive feedback from the judges, we are excited to see the results!

At 7:00 am we were at the gate, waiting in line for the 8:00 am opening. Those of us waiting in line with the trailer were pretty haggard from the 48 hour drive from Corvallis, but we were still able to register quickly and get 4th in line for technical inspection. Getting an early spot in tech inspection is really important for competition because it lets us concentrate on static events as well as the tilt, brake and noise tests tomorrow. With 120 teams registered for the event, getting through tech early is going to let us relax and concentrate on the events in the coming three days.

After a smooth technical inspection, we went to the weigh station, and weighed in at 314 lbs (143 kg). This makes us one of the lightest cars at the event, and right around the weight of the OSU09 car. Pennsylvania State University seems to be the lightest car so far, weighing in at 291 lbs (133 kg). With still many cars to get through tech, it is certainly going to be an interesting competition.

Some pictures from today:

Oh, and by the way, in our 48 hour drive from Corvallis, we managed to destroy both a tire and fender off the trailer: (Pictures coming)

The time has come! After an intense week of final shakedown and testing of GFR10 chassis 2 (The orange car) we are packing the trailer for the last time to head to the 2010 FSAE Michigan competition. With 120 teams from around the world attending, the event promises to be very competitive.

Wednesday is the first day of the competition, with teams getting the cars through technical inspection.

Thursday is the busiest of the competition, with the Presentation, Cost and Design events taking place.

Friday is the first day of dynamic events, with Acceleration, Skidpad and Autocross on track.

Saturday is the final deciding day of the event. The endurance event (40% of competition points) and the final round of Design take place.

After many long nights of hard work, we finally unveil the GFR10 cars! On Tuesday, the American side rolled out GFR10 Chassis 2, which will be attending FSAE Michigan and FSAE California. Two days later, we unveiled GFR10 Chassis 1, which will be attending FS Silverstone, FS Germany, FS Austria and FSAE Italy.

Part 1 of 4. Best part of mass production: refining the process and getting quicker every time. This will bond with the first lower half produced to form the OSU monocoque. The DHBW monocoque will quickly follow.